Thursday, October 18, 2007

The coke jet mystery: The latest developments

We are learning more about the mysterious CIA-linked Gulfstream II which went down near Cancun with over three tons of cocaine aboard.

To recap: On the day the plane flew off on its mission, it was purchased for two million dollars by the flamboyant pilot/air charter company owner Clyde O'Connor. O'Connor purchased the jet under the name of an on-paper company he called Mellon Investments. Why that name? I don't really know, although certain obvious possibilities suggest themselves.

Strangely, O'Connor remained free for a couple of weeks after the crash. On the day a Palm Beach newspaper did a story about him, he flew his Cessna off to Canada, and from there to the Azores.

Daniel Hopsicker -- or rather, one of his acquaintances within Florida aviation circles -- managed to get hold of Greg Smith, the pilot who "co-purchased" (if that really is the correct word) the aircraft with O'Connor. Smith is still in Florida.

The jet cost $2 million. Where did the money come from? O'Connor did not strike most onlookers as being that affluent. As for Smith...

“Smith’s a good pilot, and dependable, and I never thought twice about hiring him to fly a charter for me,” one aviation business manager at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport told us.

“Except I had to be sure to always front him money for expenses, or I’d get phone calls from the backside of nowhere telling me they didn’t have enough money to gas up the plane to fly home.”

So who really put up the dough? “It was Don’s money that bought the plane,”Hopsicker's source quotes Smith.

According to Hopsicker, "Don" refers to Don Whittington, a man who owned a firm called World Jet International, previously reported as a service which supplied jets to the CIA.

Don Whittington (born January 23, 1946) is a former American racing driver from Lubbock, Texas. Like the Mob's front man in Vegas, Allen Glick, he and his brothers raced sports cars in the United States and Europe in the ’70s and ’80s, winning the 24-hour Le Mans in France and coming in sixth in one Indianapolis 500.

Authorities said they financed their racing operation with drug profits.

A previous jet owned by Whittington was used for drug runs by the notorious Barry Seal. Hopsicker says that the true owner was the CIA's Paul Helliwell, the paymaster for the Bay of Pigs invasion. (If you're up for some fun, try tracing the links joining Helliwell to Frank Nugan, and Nugan to our old friend Rupert Murdoch. Start here.)

As we've seen, many of aircraft used in the rendition program -- including the Gulfstream II at the heart of this story -- have a similar history. These planes tend to be "owned" (on paper) by well-heeled businessmen, yet the jets are controlled on a day-to-day basis by CIA-linked air charter services.

So far, no-one has asked New York hotel owner William Achenbaum about his now-notorious Gulfstream II. Achenbaum was the owner of record when the jet made flights from DC and Connecticut to Gitmo.

Oh, and there's one more thing you ought to know about Don Whittington: His firm, World Jet, sold a Lear jet to the controversial flight school owner Wally Hilliard, best known for his association with Mohammed Atta. In July of 2000, authorities found 43 pounds of heroin aboard that very aircraft. Hilliard did not go to jail.

Neither, methinks, will Clyde O'Connor.

Meanwhile...

I've spoken to another reporter working on this story. While I cannot divulge all that I heard (I was rather sleepy, and he definitely took me to school), perhaps I can speak to the allegation that the cocaine aboard the downed craft belonged to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. El Chapo has become such a legendary crime figure in Mexico that he tends to get blamed for nearly everything going on down there.

The El Chapo assertion came from the McClatchy journalists covering the case. They learned it from Mexican sources, who learned it from the alleged pilot of the Gulfstream II, Eric Muñoz Sánchez, who may or may not have bribed his way out of custody. (News accounts become suspiciously hazy at this juncture.) The important point is this: Just because the pilot claimed that the coke belonged to El Chapo doesn't mean it actually did.

A mythic crime boss makes for a convenient fall guy. It's not as though he's likely to sue McClatchy for libel.

Finally...

You may also recall that the jet was owned, ever-so-briefly, by a shadowy Brazilian lawyer named Joao Luiz Malago, who set up yet another fake company -- Donna Blue Airlines, or DBA (get it?) -- just for this transaction. I've been wondering about Malago's motive. He does seem to have made a modest profit from the quick purchase-and-sale. But, capitalism being the gamble that it is, he had no guarantee of a profit. So why did he go to the trouble and expense of setting up a company in a foreign country just for those two transactions?

Hey Joe, Let's revisit the charter company Air Rutter ( you may already know all of this)from noneother than Murdoch's own NY Post:

When Achenbaum owned the plane, it was managed by a Long Beach, Calif., company, Air Rutter International, which offered it for charter.Air Rutter is owned by Arik Kislin of Long Island, who according to the Hotel Gansevoort's liquor license is also a principal in the hotel.Earlier this year, The Post reported that a Manhattan company Kislin ran in the 1990s had sponsored a U.S. visa sought by an alleged Russian mob hit man.During the time that Kislin's associate, Achenbaum, owned the plane, it made trips in 2003, 2004 and 2005 to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the McClatchy Newspapers group reported.Bill Cripe, general manager of Air Rutter International, denied the plane flew to Guantanamo during charters and that the company leased planes to the government.http://www.nypost.com/seven/10012007/news/worldnews/crash_jet_had_air_of_mystery.htm

BTW- Kislin and spouse did donate to Hillary last year- upwards of $8000 ( you can look it up here http://www.campaignmoney.com/advanced.asp )

Rudy dipped into this dirty money back in 1999.http://publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=323

that year Kislin donated to both-and Hillary returned the $Rudy did not.But that was then and this is now. Not going to look too good for Hillary that she took the money again. oops Timing is everything- so I would guess it is best we learn this now rather than a year from now. kc

ps- it appears that the Post has been trying to shake this one from the tree since April- direct from the gossip page 6 no less:http://www.nypost.com/seven/04152007/gossip/pagesix/shady_inn_crowd_pagesix_.htm

posted by Anonymous : 4:11 AM

Just finished the Hopsicker article--some fascinating info from Hopsicker. Was waiting to see what he might find on this one.I may have to re-read Barry and The Boys. The NASCAR info actually puts a new perspective on ancient history I have heard.Whittington sounds like a real corrupt pompous ass. Leave it to Hopsicker to dig up what we can't google.I would guess you are right about El Chapo- I mean, do we really expect that our government is actually going to arrest him. It's easy to point the finger at El Chapo and then say we can't apprehend him- he's out of our grasp (followed by the usual war on drugs propoganda crap etc etc.) But- someone like Whittington, that's a whole other matter. He is a US citizen and if Hopsicker can call the ass*ole up for a quote-then I am sure the government can seize his assets and arrest him. Who would follow that arrest is what I am wondering-but I am equally cynical in seeing any of that happen when you see how tight these folks are set up in the mainstream financial community. Tight politically (Rudy and Hillary) and tight with their assets. As for DonnaBlueAirlines- aka DBA--you gotta laugh man-these spooks have a sense of humor. Only Hopsicker could run with that. heh

I would guess the clue to the DBA set up and ownership lies in Hopsicker's last article on this:“Its an antiquated system which some feel is kept deliberately in place to encourage a certain ambiguity when a plane is interdicted. When a change of registration is mailed in, the FAA places a plane’s folder in what they call “suspense.”

“That’s a tremendous inducement to anyone with a chance of having a plane nabbed to keep floating sales in progress. The CIA, for example, is very adept at keeping files on its planes “in suspense.”

From what I understand of this--it is not about the money, it's about keeping the plane in suspense- keep the plane files floating. A ghost plane of sorts.kc...again.

posted by Anonymous : 12:41 PM

Is the Kislin trail mentioned by anony worth following? Because it does seem to lead to some strange places.

Checking my files, I don't find Arik Kislin, but I do find Semyon, who turns out to be Arik's uncle. From a story I can't come up with any more except in the Google cache:

December 14, 1999 — The Center for Public Integrity is investigating how billions of dollars of allegedly corrupted money from the former Soviet Union have found a haven in the United States, despite strict anti-laundering laws. ...

A prominent commodities trader who acknowledges a business history with a reputed Soviet Bloc crime figure and a notorious arms dealer has been one of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's top campaign supporters. Giuliani is expected to be the Republican candidate next year for a U.S. Senate seat from New York.

Commodities trader Semyon (Sam) Kislin and his family also lavished thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, to former Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and to a number of state and city politicians. Kislin sits on the New York City Economic Development Board. ...

A 1996 Interpol report claims that Kislin's firm, Trans Commodities, Inc., was used by two reputed mobsters from Uzbekistan, Lev and Mikhail Chernoy, for fraud and embezzlement. And a confidential 1994 FBI intelligence report on the Brooklyn, N.Y., mob organization headed by Vyacheslav Ivankov, the imprisoned godfather of Russian organized crime in the United States, lists Kislin as a "member/associate" of Ivankov's gang. It claims that his company co-sponsored a Russian crime boss and contract killer for a U.S. visa and asserts that he was a "close associate" of the late notorious arms smuggler Babeck Seroush, who later settled in Russia.

In a telephone interview on Dec. 17, Kislin confirmed he had employed Mikhail Chernoy at Trans Commodities, but said he didn't know Ivankov. "I never met this guy; I never saw him in my life," he said. He said that someone had forged his signature to obtain the hit man's visa. And, he confirmed, "I used to do business with Babeck Seroush."

The name that really caught my eye in all of that was Mikhail Chernoy (aka Michael Cherney) -- the former Russian oligarch and Russian-Israeli Mafia figure who's also a backer of John Loftus's Intelligence Summit and the founder of his own Jerusalem Summit. Both of those are major hangouts for the most extreme Iran warhawks and the kind of people who spend their time looking for alleged al-Qaeda videos in internet chatrooms, as well as having a significant overlap with the clientele list of Benador Associates and the darker reaches of the military-industrial complex.

So this does interest me -- but I don't know if it's really significant or if it's just the case that all these spooky types tend to travel in the same social circles.

posted by starroute : 6:02 PM

For what it is worth, my reporter acquaintance has advised me to dig up whatever I can on Kislin, who seems to be a close aide to Achenbaum.

Until now, I presumed that Air Rutter had to be a completely innocent party in all this. And it may still be. However, I've also heard that the DEA had an interest in this particular jet's journeys BEFORE the recent ownership flips.

Starroute-that link I posted regarding Rudy's indiscretions was the same article you cached off of indymedia. The link in my comments was from the originating source- Center for Public Integrity (excellent nuggets of research can often be found at that site)here it is again-with the html for easy accesss ;-)kc

posted by Anonymous : 11:00 PM

http://www.slideshare.net/Mormons4justice/wally-hilliard/1

Mormon Bishop owned Drug Planes and Terrorist Flight Training School.

posted by Anonymous : 4:05 AM

Let's combine:

N987SA was in Guantanamo (ownership: Achenbaum, Partner of Achenbaum: Kislin)

Clyde O'Connor is President of Mellon Investments Corp. Prior to ownership by Mellon, N210TM was owned by another company of O'Connor's—Mesquito/Mosquito Holdings (spelling differs from document to document), 43 Elizabeth Avenue, P.O. Box N7534, Nassau, Bahamas. Mosquito Holdings also owned N823AR until 2005, when it was exported to Mexico. The address on N823AR's registration uses a different P.O. Box, CB13022.

There are quite a few other companies also registered to these two P.O. boxes in Nassau. I do not know exactly how they may be connected, or if they are at all—it's possible some are from past dates before O'Connor was associated with the P.O. boxes.

I've yet to actually find anything of value from this information, but I figured I'd put it out there in case any one else comes across anything interesting from it.

posted by LoganCale : 9:54 AM

Happy Thanksgiving Joseph to you and your family. The work you’ve been doing on this subject has been great and I don’t want to also forget thanking all the others including Madcow too.

Talking about this at this time presents a dilemma for me. I have three children caught up in this mess and been trying to encourage the family to connect with me so they can get out. If nothing happens tomorrow, starting Friday I’ll post more detailed information regarding their involvement and other details to help this investigation.

My interest with following this issue is because my ex-wife’s family has a direct link to: the Cocaine Planes, Cocaine Ships, Clyde O’Connor, laundering “Drug and Gun Running” money straight into property using big banks, Abramoff, Gus Boulis Casino Boats and a lot more. The “Gun Running” part has already been in the news with Drummond and Chiquita Brands, but what many don’t know is that BOTH and Coke-A-Cola (and others) are also shipping huge amounts of Drugs into North America and elsewhere. WHY is most interesting. I’ll talk more about this another time.

If I’m not mistaken, Clyde O’Connor is my ex-brother-in-law’s wife’s brother. I stood right next to my brother-in-law while he openly tried to persuade Clyde to work with “The Guys”, as the family described the criminal group. It wasn’t until later that my brother-in-law announced to the family that he had made a significant investment along with Clyde, in a farm in Florida. Sometime later, it leaked out to family members (my wife told me) that the so called “farm” was really a business that was flying huge shipments of cocaine into the US running in partnership with “The Guys” operation. More on this later…

The reason why many are having a tough time trying to identity ownership of these planes is because there are so many involved. Widen your search to include the banks and many others because this is HUGE. This operation involves not only individuals but also companies (big ones too), a criminal element within the CIA and DEA as well as many others. I’m sure many feel this is true but as this unfolds the details of who and what are guaranteed to surface. Keep at it! I’ll try to help..

The entire DRUG SYSTEM from POINT OF ORIGIN to EACH DESTINATION is protected by corruption. The corruption part includes “doing what is needed” to setup and manage to control the environment(s) to guarantee a safe and smooth operation. What entails here is beyond anyone’s comprehension and it will require an open mind.

The family’s link with those involved revolves around a Mega Church named Willow Creek Church, South Barrington Il. There’s a lot more about this Church that will surprise you to where you may even question if it actually is a church! There will be a lot more on this later.

During the 80’s and early 90’s (as explained to me) huge drug shipments coming into Chicago came out of Mexico over the Texas border. During that time, shipments coming into Mexico were picked up off the coast in International waters by speedboats and brought back to an Ocean side residence. From there they were trucked over the border. The Chicago weekly shipment is $100 Million and when arriving in the Illinois area, it’s split up to include Florida and New York. There are other huge weekly shipments going elsewhere also. I’ll expand on this later.

Please understand that the Drug System, by design, is FUNDING in large part, “Black Op’s” supporting the goals of this Criminal System. The money is huge as the Chicago shipments alone amount to over 5$Billion annually. You should see from reading the flight paths of the alleged Drug Planes that they are flying all over the US so the annual amount of Drug Money has got to be unbelievable.

Please note that for years there has been an on going effort to stop me from talking about this. I’ve lost all but one computer, haven’t been able to work or run my business and have had to scale down my life to remain safe. Internet searches are limited to using Public Library Computer systems. Thankfully, it hasn’t been till lately that I’ve been able to do more. So if I’m able to, I’ll write more on Friday. To me, Thanksgiving Day is the last day the family has to connect with me.

Marty DidierNorthbrook, IL

posted by Anonymous : 5:06 PM

My ex-brother-in-law was recently in the news so to expand more please review the links below. I’m not sure what may still exist since my experience with anything to do with this area includes a lot of Internet funny business. However, some may still exist in cache if you search on the article title.

### Time-line ###- Incident - July 12- arrested - July 18- First Court appearance - August 16- Judge Larry Axelrood set Sept. 18 as the date when the Cook County State's Attorney's Office will be required to produce felony review material related to the case- case to go to trial - Oct. 22

Some articles are brief and a few others explain his company name and more. What may be important other than his court problem(s) are to realize that there are cooperative links with a mountain of “corruption” that also supports the system. The Drug System part is huge involving more people than you may be able to count and he isn’t the only money man either. Part of the problem is that corrupt Police from many towns are linked into a support system and some actually are distributing drugs. As an example, the town I live is including the towns around me are all connected in the system. They have the power and will set you up for anything to get you out of the way.

Bruce Adreani as mentioned in the articles is married to Ann-Marie (O’Connor). While married, I was at a family gathering where Bruce and the O’Connor’s came over along with Clyde. Bruce, Clyde and I were standing together chit-chatting when Bruce started to talk to Clyde trying to encourage him to get involved with the criminal system. He warned him about the type of people these where so he would need to be careful and do a good job. As their conversation grew deeper, Bruce moved the two of them outside where it was more private.

A short time later, it was announced in the family that Bruce was investing heavily in a farm in Florida along with Clyde. He made a number of trips to Florida and some time later, my wife (still married) told me that Bruce and Clyde were shipping (flying) in huge amounts of cocaine. I’m not exactly sure of the time but this may have been in the early 90’s.

The Adreani family owns a Property Development business named Norwood Builders. It’s typical for this type of business that with each new property development they start a separate new company to limit liabilities. The Norwood Company has been around since the 50’s when the father (Ray Adeani) with his brother Harold (deceased) started the company.

The family joined this criminal system in the late 70’s following committing their first murder of a Bank President (Dempster Plaza Bank) (story for another time). The people they hired to investigate and then murder the Bank President are the same people they joined with who are considered in large part “Government People”. The person they have been working with is Bob Irwin who may still be the Director of Security at Willow Creek Church. Bob is a retired x-DEA Agent who flashed his badge at me. When I first met with Bob for a few hours at Willow Creek Church in the early 2000’s, he quickly became angry and threatened me after learning who I was. Bob is the person the family calls, “the Leader of The Guy’s”. Willow Creek has a portion of the property it sits on as once owned by Organized Crime and the insanity goes on from there. The Organized Crime family involved lives in a huge home to the back side of the church.

I attended Willow Creek church from 1999 – 2005. For more than a year I attended a Men’s meeting on Sunday morning at 7:30am. We had more than 50 men attending and met a younger man who was a minister from another area going through a divorce. He sat at our table and was looking for a job. After a few meetings, someone told him to talk to the head minister named Steve Covell. Steve was the Director of Ministries. When this man went to Steve, he immediately pointed out another man to talk to at the meeting. This man is one of the head criminals involved in shipping the huge drug shipments in from Texas. My friend came back to our table and told me he will be starting a new job driving a truck. He didn’t know much more but is eager to get started. I didn’t see him for more than a few months than he showed up. He wasn’t smiling and didn’t seem happy. Since my divorce started in 1997, the criminal group, where very suspicious of me. This friend now seemed to be also. I asked him how the truck driving job was. He didn’t have much to say however at the end of the meeting he quickly went over to the criminal group where I heard one of them try to get him out of his slump with saying “Those are GOOD PEPPERS, aren’t they?” He knew what he was shipping. The truck is called the “Pepper Truck”.

The family told me about the “Pepper Truck” while married in the 90’s. At that time they were mostly involved in shipments coming in from sea going ships (Chiquita, Drummond, Coke-a-Cola and others). Shipments are picked up off the coast of Mexico, then the drugs were trucked into Texas and then again to Chicago among other places. The Chicago bound truck was called “The Pepper Truck” because it carried peppers to cover the drug odor. The Feds nailed the “Pepper Truck” sometime in early 2004. There’s another part to this as this criminal group includes a very high tech electronic/computer and software side that had been working on scrubbing the net clean. More on this another time…

My life was and has been full of “Black-Ops” with break-ins, serious problems driving and much more. They normally kill with car accidents with using Gang Stalking and by design, acting like a Death Squad with collectively corralling you into an accident so you end up being harmed. There’s more to this for another time too. It was a very difficult time for me and I was forced to shrink down my life as small as possible in order to remain safe. Saying this is a lot easier than doing it!

While at Willow Creek, I was also talking to someone higher up in the Church about “some” of what I knew. I couldn’t talk about much of anything as I couldn’t trust anyone and if word got out, that would make my life most unsafe. It quickly became obvious that the people in the higher levels of the church were reading my email and possibly also listening to my phone conversations. This came from their comments and questions of me during our meetings. While married, the family talked about the church and their involvement in the criminal system but it wasn’t ever known who all was involved. It’s a Mega Church. Finally after dealing with more insanity in Dec 2005, I pushed my point with my contact and that’s when the church soon had me arrested and a mental health test was ordered by the Police. The South Barrington Police made the arrest and it was obvious from their questioning that something more is involved here too. More on this another time…. It’s important to realize that while married, the family threatened me with this if I were to talk to anyone about what I knew.

For those searching trying to identify who owns what and when with anything involved with this, please understand that they switch ownership amongst themselves quickly. There are so many loopholes which they seem to know about and use to their advantage. This is a huge Drug system as mentioned above the Chicago shipments exceed $5Billion annually.

The family often bragged about this being “The World’s largest Criminal System” and for good reason. There are so many facets to what they are involved in that it can’t be properly explained in a few posts. Their goals and involvements are also very unbelievable so if anyone questions what I say, please accept that I do understand.

I’ll post another time. Hope this helps. Below is my name if anyone wants to get a hold of me however it would be best if we could meet in person. I’ll entertain questions if there are any.